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Topic: Ice Storms in Missouri (Read 10081 times)

Some of you may be aware that we're having some pretty nasty weather in my neck of the woods (southern Missouri). It started with freezing rain Monday evening and cycled thru rain, freezing rain, sleet. & snow was called for, but hasn't been seen so far.

Our biggest danger at the moment is ice, it's coating everything. The trees around our house are covered in ice & now they're starting to come down a piece at a time. It's an eerie sound, you can hear cracking all around you, then crashes as the larger limbs & weaker trees can't hold on.

We also have a great many people without power now, the county is suffering the worst it sounds like. I'm in town, & so far we've got power, they are however warning everybody about the inevitable power outages. We should be okay, my only fear is burst water pipes. I don't have a contingency in place for that. I've had the heat cranked up to 80 since last night trying to heat the house as much as possible just in case. We've even brought the outside dogs in (not enough room in here, trust me) out of fear that one of the trees out back would give way & end up across the kennel. My In-Laws, who live about 45 minutes south of us haven't had power since this morning. They've moved out to their camper which has gas heat & a generator. My camper is still up at our deer lease, so that options out for us.

I've taken a bunch of pictures & I'll take a few more on the way to work tonight. I'll post them when I can, hopefully we'll maintain power through it all but if not I'll post them when we're back in business. If anybody else is getting any of this weather I hope you all are faring well.

Holy crap, you too? First Texas and now Missouri. Sounds like it is heading this way. I knew those clouds looked funny this afternoon. I wonder if a cold front it heading this way. I will have to keep a look out on the weather.

Aside of that, DEV, does your water run off of the city or is it Well? If it is city then let your faucets drip, all of them, and you should avoid any burst pipes. If you can keep the heat up in your house the pipes under your house should be fine as well. We recently had the coldest weather here in several decades and that saved my bacon. If you have Well, then maybe there is a way for your generator to power it enough to allow it to slowly drip water through the faucets and bath tubs in your house.

Might not be a bad idea to fill a tub up with water for reserves at least for flushing.

I listened to the NOAA report and there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary for my area over the next week, but things can change quickly. I remember when the radio was saying that we would get 18 degrees and wound up with 14. They also said it would not snow, and then within three days of it they said it would.

the one thing i remember most from our ice storm back in '02 was after the power was of it was quiet as heckminus the random snaping of huge branches and the following crash as it came down on the fence, shed, cars, etc.it was crazy.hopefully you'll end up with little damage and a decent supply of firewod.

We have city water...I'd completely forgotten the whole "let your faucets drip" trick, it's been so long since I've been through a serious ice storm. I'm at work now & it's been confirmed, the south side of town (where I live) is without power.

The tree popping & pieces falling out of the sky started before I came to work, pretty scary stuff. Something actually fell that shook our whole house & we couldn't see what it was. Nothing real close to us, but close enough....

It looks like we may be in line to get some snow behind the two days worth of ice. I hope not.

Hope those of you that may be getting you're own nasty weather are faring well. I don't know when I'll get back on here, may be a couple of days or so. Best of luck to everybody.

We have city water...I'd completely forgotten the whole "let your faucets drip" trick, it's been so long since I've been through a serious ice storm. I'm at work now & it's been confirmed, the south side of town (where I live) is without power.

The tree popping & pieces falling out of the sky started before I came to work, pretty scary stuff. Something actually fell that shook our whole house & we couldn't see what it was. Nothing real close to us, but close enough....

It looks like we may be in line to get some snow behind the two days worth of ice. I hope not.

Hope those of you that may be getting you're own nasty weather are faring well. I don't know when I'll get back on here, may be a couple of days or so. Best of luck to everybody.

Well, power is back for us. There are 100.000+ that are still without power & will be for weeks according to estimates by "they". My In-laws are among those. I've heard various reports of National Guardsman & "martial law", it's tough to say what's accurate at the moment because the situation is still very fluid, so take it with a grain of salt (I do). I can say for certain that I know two towns are under National Guard control & all access is closed to everyone but actual residents of those towns. Those two towns are completely without any sustainable services. There are "warming centers" all over the region & it's been vicious cold here.

Our county power supplier has somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 customers & as of this morning 27,000 of those are still without power. Every report indicates weeks without power for all but a few. The huge power lines that run across country to the power stations are laying on the ground in many places & for the second time in about 8 or 10 months we're fixing to be a disaster area, or whatever they call it.

I have lots of pictures I've taken around town, mostly of ice & busted up trees. I've been up for the last two days & between working my own job, running the chainsaw & ferrying Tina's colleagues back & forth to their houses... I'm beat. I'll get the pictures up in a day or two after I've had a chance to get them on the computer & taken a look at them myself.

I've also learned a few more things I've needed to learn...though I am getting woefully tired of learning them the hard way. In the past year we've had record floods, record winds & now freakin' record ice. Personally, I'm sick of setting records...

Well, power is back for us. There are 100.000+ that are still without power & will be for weeks according to estimates by "they". My In-laws are among those. I've heard various reports of National Guardsman & "martial law", it's tough to say what's accurate at the moment because the situation is still very fluid, so take it with a grain of salt (I do). I can say for certain that I know two towns are under National Guard control & all access is closed to everyone but actual residents of those towns. Those two towns are completely without any sustainable services. There are "warming centers" all over the region & it's been vicious cold here.

Our county power supplier has somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 customers & as of this morning 27,000 of those are still without power. Every report indicates weeks without power for all but a few. The huge power lines that run across country to the power stations are laying on the ground in many places & for the second time in about 8 or 10 months we're fixing to be a disaster area, or whatever they call it.

I have lots of pictures I've taken around town, mostly of ice & busted up trees. I've been up for the last two days & between working my own job, running the chainsaw & ferrying Tina's colleagues back & forth to their houses... I'm beat. I'll get the pictures up in a day or two after I've had a chance to get them on the computer & taken a look at them myself.

I've also learned a few more things I've needed to learn...though I am getting woefully tired of learning them the hard way. In the past year we've had record floods, record winds & now freakin' record ice. Personally, I'm sick of setting records...

I live in North West AR and we got about an inch and half of ice. I lost power Tuesday evening. I was quite a light show tuesday night with all the transformers blowing and the Blue-green lights in the sky. I was actually surprised to lose power due to the fact that my neighborhood has underground utilities. My fiance did not lose power and we felt sure that she would (power lines practically had trees all around them ).

I have not bought my generator as of yet (one in the plans and will be bought by March) but did not worry to much. When my power first went out I really took this as an opportunity to see how my preps would work. I stayed at the house the first night to see what the temp would be using my alternative heating sources, Probably got one of my best nights sleep in a long while.

In all I was really happy, All my lights worked well, my Ham Radio had a good amount of backup power, which was great because I have the emergency services programed in and to hear what was going on. Need to get a few of those stick and click lights that you tap to turn on and place in the closet will all my preps to make it easier. Headlamps are the best to work with, will up upgrading mine soon.

It was interesting in Walmart on thursday as people really just started getting out. Stores were sold out of Generators (of Course), Cell phone car chargers, Battery operated radios and almost sold thru on batteries. The camping isle was picked clean but the stores did have pallets of the propane tanks (small).

In All I am glad my power came back on friday at lunch and I will be improving my preps where needed. I also think I turned one of my co workers on to prepping a little bit as I helped them to know how to utilize their generator more efficiently. they we very happy as was their family

Got lots of pics, I'll put them up when our services get reconnected. The phone line/DSL cable is laying in my front yard. It came down sometime Fri. afternoon. I only have a minute or two at work to check in so we'll see y'all when we see ya.

Okay, here goes. I'll do the best I can remembering the time line of things. Life is for us, is essentially back to normal. We were lucky, we only went without power for about 30 hours or so. From 7PM on January 27th until around 11PM or so January 28th we were without electricity. I'm not exactly sure when the power went out because I was at work & my wife had the emergency cellphone. She called me at some point in the evening (on the 27th) & told me the electricity had gone off.

The ice storm actually started for us on the evening of the 26th of January. I was just getting to work about 5PM & one of the girls I work with asked me if I thought that we'd get much ice. My finely honed psychic powers tole me no...thank god I don't rely on my psychic powers to make a living. & yeah, it was sleeting at that point, & I mean really sleeting.

1st lesson learned...pay more attention to broadcast news. Because I live most of my life in the dark (literally, not metaphorically...at least not until this damn ice storm) I tend to get most of my news from the inter-webz. I avoid broadcast news generally...turns out it's actually handy to pay attention to what the local news stations are saying. I was caught completely unaware about the humongous ice monster headed our way. What can I say, no excuse here.

So, it sleets all night the 26th & when I get up on the evening of the 27th it's still sleeting...damn, I wasn't expecting this. I'm standing in my front yard & all I'm hearing is the tick tick of the hardened ice crystals falling all around me. It's surreal, there are rare moments in our lives when everything is completely & absolutely silent. When what you hear & what you feel are the same....you know it's not good. You know you think you're ready but that little voice in the back of your head is saying "are you really"? That's how I felt as the sleet came down all around me, it coated the trees, the yard, my Jeep & me as I stood there & wondered what would come.

Here's what I had on hand. I had plenty of food & water, I had supplemental heat in the form of a kerosene heater & a several gallons of k-1 kerosene to run the thing. I wasn't particularly worried for Tina & I. What I was worried about was how bad it would eventually get for everyone else...& how long it would last. We also had our camper which was stocked with supplies. The only problem was that it was still up at the deer lease...which may not have been a bad thing....depending.

I'm going to put up a bunch of pictures because at this point things start to get a little blurred. We basically spent from the evening of the 27th until the 31st doing what we had to do. I got very little sleep, I spent quite a lot of time ferrying Tina's colleagues back and forth from her work to their houses...there were some of them that stayed at the nursing home working for 2 or 3 days straight because people were calling in. There was only 1 family, I'm sad to say, who came & got their family member. Tina's work, which is a nursing home, was without power for a week. They basically put as many blankets as they could find on the residents & moved everybody to the halls where they could concentrate the heat (provided by a generator that they imported). At one point the administrator went to our local Walmart & K-Mart & bought every blanket the stores had in stock.

2nd lesson learned...people in general, don't really give a shit if they're not suffering. Sorry, but human nature being what it is, if you're not affected it's difficult to understand or empathize with what's going on. Unless we're directly & primarily affected we tend not to think about it. There is always someone who has it tougher or worse than you do. Remember that the next time you feel like whining about something.

On with the pics....most of these were taken from the driver's seat of my Cherokee, so I apologize if they aren't the best.

On my way home the morning of the 28th, around 4:30AM when I got off. Normally this stretch of road would be lit up like daylight, but the power was off at this point. What you can't see are all the stores & street lights around the road. This is essentially in the middle of town. The objects you do see are street signs. The white is ice. We ended up getting very little snow, maybe an inch or so at the very end of the storm.

Later on the morning of the 28th. I'd taken a colleague of my wife's home after a 48 hour shift. This is 67 N. Hwy coming in to Poplar Bluff. Only a couple of Jeeps on the road at this point, including me . Not much else moving, not even DOT trucks....

The blob on the left is a car that is stuck in the median. I don't know how in the hell it got down there but I imagine it was a miserable walk for whoever was driving.

Some shots around town on the morning of the 28th, the third day of the storm. It was still sleeting, freezing raining & at the very end some snow....

A school playground in my neighborhood.

On the morning of the 30th (best I remember) I received an e-mail from a friend of mine that lives in St. Louis, she was concerned because her parents had been trapped inside their home since the storm started on the Monday previous. She was able to talk to them because their hard line hadn't been compromised. They said they weren't able to get out because their driveway (a 3/4 mile country driveway) was blocked by downed tress & debris. She said I was the only one she knew who might be able to get to them. She said she figured I had a chainsaw, a 4x4 & emergency heat...sometimes it sucks to be the "prepared guy". I value my friends, if you're my friend all you have to do is call. Lara did, so I did what friends do for for friends...I packed my shit, geared up & headed toward her parents place. This is what I found when I got there.

Not as bad as I thought it would be, but it took me two hours to get about 1/4 mi. down their driveway.

I got little distracted by the scenery....I love nature, in all her vicious ways.That big tree came down because of the ice.I got lucky, Lara's dad was just around the corner here. He'd started clearing from the house so I wouldn't have to clear much more from here.Making the corner...headed toward the house.

Yea gotta admit it's pretty. What was the low temp? And weren't you chained up?

Chains? Come on, it's a Jeep...Jeep's laugh if you try to chain 'em. I didn't have a set for it. I just kept the speed low & stayed off the brake. There were a couple of times when I could have used them though.

The lows were in the single digits & low teens most of that week. The day I went to clear the driveway it was warm enough that the ice had begun to melt. I was wishing I had a hard hat, the ice was falling on my head.

We've had a few storms like that here in OK over the past few years. It's amazing to see what ice can do, but the worst of the storms was depressing for some of the elderly. They were sure that they wouldn't live to see the trees turn "beautiful" again.

I'm more optimistic. Over the past year our neighborhood's surviving trees have stretched towards the sun so fast I could almost sit and watch it happening.

Good to hear that everything is alright with you and yours. Several places got hit bad by this storm front. We didn't see any of it. All we got was a few nights in the teens.

Hearing about these ice storm stories made me wonder how well I was prepared for such an event. The one thing I am lacking is a kerosene heater (but not for my lack of trying - Wal Mart has been sold out of them for about a month). I would prefer to have a propane stove, but I couldn't cook with that inside the house anyway. Or could I? Aren't some regular stoves made to use propane? It also made me wonder about the dangers of keeping a kerosene heater inside your house year round. I do not have an outside building to keep things. I live in a trailer.

DEV, about keeping up to date on the weather...I have made it a habit every morning while I am getting up to listen to the NOAA broadcast for the week on my two-way radio. It has saved me a lot of panic and grief. It has also allowed me to help prepare others because when the subject of weather comes up (and most times during the day they will) I mention any inclement weather on the way. So far no one has thought this very strange. I think it is a healthy habit to get into. That way you don't have to listen to a bunch of crap on the TV broadcasts to get the information you need.